Category: Alison

Et Tu, Chengdu?

[Yes, our driver DOES speak a little French…]

Where to begin; at the end of course — at The Dictionary of Flavor restaurant in an upscale pedestrian mall area of Chengdu (where you can buy silk embroideries for THOUSANDS of dollars each) I crossed off almost everything left on the (written!) list of flavors that I wanted to sample:

  • Spicy Noodle Salad (native spice!)
  • Fish Flavored Grass Salad
  • Fire Exploding Pork Kidneys with Wood Ear Mushrooms
  • Wonton Soup
  • Jiao Zi Dumplings in Sauce
  • Steamed Beef In Corn Pudding
  • Cornstarch Noodles with Pork Intestines
  • Noodles with Beef Sauce
  • Big Lychee Flavor Pork with Shiitake Mushrooms (aka Sweet ‘n’ Sour Pork, but so much more)
  • Deep Fried Yam Stick
  • Steamed Glutenous Rice Dumplings

At one point I might have said that Xinjiang was ‘killing us with kindness’ where as Chengdu appears to be killing me with endless awesome dishes.
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Oh, Chengdu…

…you had me at ‘Hello.’

As if Rabbit’s Head and Stinky Tofu on a stick, and Pork Lung stew wasn’t enough, today was a deep delicious dive into the history and foundations of this marvelous cuisine.

But first, a Panda break…

…and now back to our regularly scheduled post…breakfast at our hotel is a wonderful fantasy of mine: what if breakfast was just like dinner? What if you could have stir fried peppers, savory noodles, and steamed meat buns for breakfast? Or a freshly prepared bowl of noodle soup? I am in heaven. AND there’s COFFEE (finally — not even NesCafé! The real deal!).
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Western China In Pictures (43 photos)

This will be my first post since leaving for an intimate tour of Western China. There is SO much to talk about that I can’t really start right now (we still have about a week of additional touring!) so I will offer a “taste” (if forty-some photos are a “taste”) of what we experienced out in the desert regions. The images will not be captioned, and each one of them would justify a post on their own. I doubt we could ever follow through with that, but I expect we will be able to expand on a few of them. And I’m not even including ANY of my food pictures…! Those will deserve special attention later. For now, enjoy this taste of our tour:

[Editor’s Note: The “Great Firewall” (insulating most Chinese users from internal or external traffic on the Internet pertaining to subjects the Government deems sensitive or forbidden) did not permit me to post anything with the words “Xinjiang, Urumqi, Turpan, Uighur” as well as specific images — one of them showed a knife next to a peeled pear and the peelings…]

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Western Xinjiang Province

This room was our bedroom for the past five days in the village of Ilanlik.
We were guests of our friend A. in his parents’ home.
Lots of good stories to tell about nights sleeping under the moon in this Muslim ethnic area, the desert of western China.

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Beijing Dumplings

As 10am approached, I packed up my projects and we headed around and around the corners of the warren until we found Black Sesame Kitchen again, this time with the bright sun streaming through their windows. Coco and Michelle and Chefs greeted us again. Unlike when we were the first to arrive for dinner the previous evening, we were among the last to arrive to a full class of 11 international adults learning how to make basic Chinese dumplings “from scratch.”

Here’s how to make a handmade dumpling.
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